Enlightening, enjoyable and full of good humour — Andrew Holgate sums up the Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival

I
t snowed, it rained, and the wind whipped in and froze the bones. But nothing
nature threw could quite douse the spirits of those attending what turned
out to be one of the most enlightening and enjoyable Sunday Times Oxford
Literary Festivals one could remember.

Sally Dunsmore, the festival’s tireless and admirably patient director, had
brought together a Who’s Who of literary names for the nine days of events
between March 16 and March 24 — ­Seamus Heaney, Julian Barnes, Hilary
Mantel, Sue Townsend, Robert Macfarlane and Edna O’Brien among them — and
the enthusiasm this generated was infectious. Some, including The Sunday
Times’ chief sports writer David Walsh and the effervescent William
Dalrymple, overran their allotted hours, but no one was complaining. The
queues afterwards for Walsh in particular were long and the praise for his
13-year pursuit of Lance Armstrong was unstinting.